Conventionally, it is well-known that an in-vehicle apparatus may be coupled to a portable terminal, which has a touch panel for receiving user inputs, for displaying a screen image of the portable terminal on a display unit of the in-vehicle apparatus. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2010-130553 (JP '553) discloses an image data for displaying an image on a touch panel screen of a portable terminal is transmitted to a vehicular device, and such image data is processed to be displayed on a touch panel screen of the vehicular device to have substantially the same image on the vehicular device side. Further, the vehicular device in JP '553 transmits a user operation on the vehicular device side touch panel to the portable terminal, after detecting the user operation on the touch panel and converting the vehicular device side touch panel coordinates of the user operation to portable terminal side touch panel coordinates.
Further, it is also known that a user-uttered voice command is voice-recognized and is used to operate a vehicular device based on a voice recognition technique, such as when a driver of a vehicle is operating the vehicle and is not able to manually operate a switch or the like. Such an example is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2010-185975 ('975), in which the user-uttered voice command is voice-recognized for operating an audio device in a vehicle.
The invention in the JP '553 is considered as a technique for establishing a cooperative control of the portable terminal and the vehicular device, enabling a relay of touch panel operation information from the portable terminal to the vehicular device, based on the coordinate information of the user operation on the vehicular device side as described above.
However, even if the vehicular device recognizing a voice command is used in the invention in JP '553, such voice command recognized in the vehicular device side cannot be used to operate the portable terminal. More practically, JP '553 only discloses a configuration in which operation coordinates of the touch panel operation on the vehicular device side are converted to operation information for operating the portable terminal, and such operation information is transmitted to the portable terminal. Therefore, the invention in JP '553 is not capable of transmitting the operation information for operating the portable terminal, based on a voice command accepted by the voice recognition, thereby not enabling the user to control the portable terminal based on the voice command accepted on the vehicular device side.